From Murderer to Conqueror

by Jeff S.

  “The one behind the ear, Sir.” He looked at her with a perplexed look. “What is the point of injecting someone in the foot? And how did they get her still enough to do so? The feet are sensitive, she would have likely struggled and made the injection messy. It would not be as clean if it were the first spot. Besides, you can see a bubble in her skin around the injection in her foot. It looks like the blood was unable to circulate the substance, leaving it to stay in one spot.” She finally let her gaze fall from his, resting on the picture on her desk. “That’s just my own opinion anyways.”

  The chief started nodding again, the subtle trace of pride in his eyes. It was something that she was not expecting from him. She still couldn’t shake the feeling of suspicion.

  “Good. You guessed right on the aspect of a pooled concentration of liquid in the foot. Keep working, there are things we are missing. I need to show this to the other techs so they don’t get any more upset over my giving you this project.” The chief left without a word, leaving Eloise to bathe in her thoughts of confusion and misunderstanding. This one kill was changing her for the worse, and she wasn’t sure if she could keep up her facade for much longer.

  Chapter. 7

  Eloise hardly slept the next couple nights. The techs were no closer to discovering her than she was to figuring out who had moved the body and why. She had the sneaking suspicion that someone was out there following her, dragging her mind down into a pit. The boot prints she had found were a dud; they had no markings to determine who they belonged to. She knew they were male, but that differential didn’t narrow the searches down enough. The paper that was used was simply dollar store paper, with the watermark of a feather. The ink was homemade though; that she could use to her advantage.

  The blue fiber was nothing cohesive either. One of the techs found matching cloth in the dump up the road, assuming that the fiber had just moved with the wind and happened to stick to the body. She didn’t necessarily believe that theory, but a quick trip to the dump ruled out the option of someone taking residence there without being caught.

  For the first time in her life, Eloise felt the control slipping from her hands.

  She sat in her office, staring at her notes, trying to throw something together when Peter came in, walking over to sit on her desk like he did several times a day now. She gave him a half smile, looking back at her work and throwing her mind back into thought. The chief came in looking distraught, throwing a piece of paper in front of her. She grabbed for it before it hit the ground, responding to his half-hearted apology. The liquid they had found pooled in Linda’s skin on her foot was simply clear glue, like something you would buy at a craft store.

  “I can honestly say that this case is confusing me.” The chief dragged in a chair from another office, dropping his body down hard and burying his face in his hands. “The evidence is clear. She was injected with something, but we can’t tell what, she was moved to where we found her, but we can’t figure out where she was actually killed, and why. That’s the biggest question here. Why?!” The chief jumped to his feet, screaming once as he punched at nothing. “As far as I can tell, Linda Kellmire had no enemies. She had no record of anything illegal. Not even a traffic ticket.” The chief stiffened his back, an expression of shock running across his face.

  “That’s just it, isn’t it?” He got up close to Peter, practically pressing his face to the other man. “Her record is too clean. She didn’t even have any family listed. I think I’m on to something!” He stormed from the office with one hand in the air. Eloise and Peter looked at each other with eyebrows raised, not sure what to say. Peter ran after the chief, Eloise running right after him.

  Chief sat in his office, staring at his computer screen with wild eyes. He muttered to himself, talking too fast for the two to keep up with. Pictures were moving at a mile a minute across the screen, not sticking long enough to recognize any of them. The coffee maker buzzed, the chief moving erratically to fill his cup and turn back to the screen.

  “Are you okay Chief?” Peter asked, narrowing his eyes to watch the man closely. Chief turned his wild eyes on the two of them, not keeping his focus on either person.

  “I’m great. Splendid actually. I may have just solved this case. Or maybe I threw another curveball at it. We will know shortly.” The man talked fast, unable to stay still Eloise and Peter looked at each other, not sure what was happening entirely.

  “You’ve lost us Chief.” Eloise spoke for the first time, her mouth dry.

  “Us. How cute.” A smile lit the man’s face. Eloise felt heat rush to her cheeks, opening her mouth to retort but being quickly cut off. “Linda Kellmire. She’s too clean. Her credit score is perfect, no record, no traffic violations, nothing. But there is also no record of family. No parents, siblings, love children, ex husbands, beneficiaries. Nothing. She can’t be what we think she is.”

  Eloise felt her heart racing, trying to escape it’s ribbed imprisonment. If he could find out who Linda really was, then he could find out who she really was. She would kill him. It wouldn’t be the first time she killed out of Order. They would merely chastise her, she was untouchable in this industry. Eloise kept her expression confused, acting as normally as she could behind the blood pumping wildly through her veins.

  Beeping noises started to come from the computer. Chief whirred quickly, his eyes even more wild than she could have thought possible. Several pictures of a woman stopped up on the screen, all of them from cameras on streets and traffic cameras and seldomly from social media pictures.

  They were all Linda with different looks.

  The last picture that popped up was Eloise and Linda on their last Order. Luckily, Eloise had put some weight on for that assignment and she kept her hair short and red. She was easily hidden. But it was obvious that it was Linda in all of them.

  A list of different names popped up next to each picture, pointing out her identities at the times. Eloise pushed down the lump in her throat, her fists balling up. She didn’t need to hide the horror on her face; that was real.

  “Anne Wentz, it seems you have lived a very interesting life up to his point. I wonder what you have been up to these past thirty years.” He shut the monitor off on his computer, leaving his office with Peter in tow. Eloise stood frozen where she stood, her heart racing wildly. She had gotten a mere breath away from being caught.

  Chapter. 8

  The chief found nothing on the organization, but connected Linda- Anne- to other kills. Luckily, he didn’t take the time to dig into who and why. He would come by her office every so often and scream a name out- one that belonged to Linda at some point. He was fascinated by her.

  Eloise had tested the blood samples from her trip the night before, waiting until now to feel secure enough to run it through the database without being questioned. It only took moments for the results to come back, no name connected it with a match. She knew it was too diluted to match with anyone, but she had to try. Eloise was just about to give up when she thought of something; the mud. She had forgotten about the mud left on the branch that night she went.

  She would wait until the cover of dark to go. Peter came in at that moment, sitting on her desk. She sighed, looking at him sideways.

  “I am wondering if this town is so boring that you have nothing better to do than to sit by my side as often as possible.” She raised one eyebrow, a playful smile on her lips.

  “Oh you have no idea. Or maybe,” He hopped down, walking behind her chair, placing his hands on that back of it. “I’m here to keep an eye out for you. I mean, you are a strange girl.” Peter spun her chair around a couple times, stopping it in front of himself so he could kneel down and look her in the eye. “Either way you’re the lucky one for getting to spend your time with me.” Peter winked at her, standing with a laugh, hopping up onto her desk again.

  “Or maybe you are just the biggest distraction ever sent my way.” She barely got the words out of her mouth before she realized the look in Peter�
��s eyes. For the first time since stepping foot in the police station she saw the signs. He had small cuts on the back of his hands, the blood she found in the snow likely coming from that. His boots were custom made; she assumed he bottoms would be devoid of markings. He was always around when she got new information about the case, never seeming disturbed by it. Eloise moved her gaze to his feet, finally seeing the spots where the mud was caked on, being the same color as what she found in the tree.

  “It is best if you keep your calm Miss Lindauer, you and I both know that.” He reached to grab her arm, the woman snatching at his instead, squeezing at his forearm. “Come with me. We have things to discuss.” He turned to walk again, stopping to look behind him as if he were waiting for her. She shook her head, refusing to go with. “I do not wish to do things the difficult way, but I will if needed. Besides, you saw how well I had rearranged things, it would be just as easy to carry you home after falling asleep at your desk. Eloise opened her mouth to protest. Peter had his hand at her mouth before she could even breathe. She stood still, captured. The wheels turned in her head, trying to find ways to get out of the situation she was in.

  Eloise followed behind him, knowing that he had a gun in his pocket. She was good at killing, but guns were an unfair advantage. She could not win that battle. Eloise tried to hide the uncomfortable torment as they walked out of her office and towards his personal car. He pushed her in the passenger side smiling for appearances. She loathed his ability to mask one emotion with a lesser one.

  He turned on some music, singing loudly. She sat in her seat, back straight and hands folded across her lap. She felt like a child being punished.

  “You’re smart Miss Lindauer, so tell me where we are going.” He turned the music down enough to talk, still humming as she thought.

  “The beach.” She assumed he lived near there, if not on the coast. Peter started smacking the steering wheel in accordance to the beat of the song.

  “Right! You are so right.”

  “You know my name.” She kept her eyes straight, wanting to watch the exact route he took. But he knew that. Peter made many abrupt turns and twists, throwing her off guard.

  “I do. You are not easily forgotten Heide Lindauer.” He started driving faster, swerving the car a little, paying more attention to her.

  Eloise felt her heart pounding in her chest, her vision starting to blur. The roads started to twist with the trees, the orange of the morning sun mingling awkwardly with the blue of the coast.

  “Now your next question is,” He inhaled deeply, mocking her with his face and his hands. “‘Oh Peter! How could this possibly be?!’” He placed his hands back on the wheel, keeping his eyes on her. “ You don’t remember me, do you Heide?”

  Eloise looked hard at his face, squinting her eyes to remember. Countless faces jumped through her mind, none of them sticking to his face. She shook her head slowly, her eyebrows crinkling in confusion. Peter through his hands in the air in exasperation, making a noise.

  “You girls are all the same. How can you not remember? I relive it every day. You picked me up in Moscow when I was fourteen. You and that old lady came to claim me.”

  Eloise did remember. The Organization leader targeted young teens in different countries to build them up as soldiers of death. That was her first mission out of the country. The boy sat in a corner scratching the bugs from his head and praying the livestock would live long enough to eat. What he didn’t know at the time was that his rather had been stabbed on the way home from work and his mother was laying in the field being eaten by bugs and other carnivorous creatures. Eloise- Heide- was born on the wrong side of the Germany at the wrong time, her parents forced to work long hours just to get enough money for food.

  “I remember. But what are you doing here? I got the target.” She saw the animal instincts in his eyes. It was rogue, like a dog with rabies.

  “I assumed you were here for me, so I waited for you. But then Anne ended up dead and after that I wanted to see how long it would take. Come to think of it, I never thought I would be the one breaking the news to you. Different questions ran through her mind, not stopping at anywhere in particular.

  “Why did you move here then? That all seems so pointless. She watched the world stop as the car stopped, He lived in a large farm house, built recently and made out of a yellowing wood.

  “I retired here. I bet you didn’t know that people like us can retire; did you? The organization either thinks we’d never last long enough to do it or killed for it. You can just drop out and agree to be checked in on until you die from natural causes or until someone like you comes knocking.

  “Then why the game? Why move the body and leave notes? Why any of it? And what about the Chief? I thought he knew it was me.” The two got out of the car, walking towards the beach. Her hair flew to cover her face and clog her mouth.

  “When you’ve been out this long, it’s more fun to do that than just sit at home and wonder about arresting someone and who the next president will be. Besides, if the situation were different and someone equal to your talent came looking, wouldn’t you over react a little? ” He let her into his house. It was obscenely clean and normal, not a thing out of place.

  “As far as the Chief goes, he’s just crazy. And now for the final part to this twisted mystery that you accidentally created.” Peter turned around, his gun pointed directly at her face. The barrel of the gun was a sick reminder of what she did for survival and how it felt to be on the other side of death.

  Instinct kicked in immediately. She kicked at his shin, hearing it crack loudly just as the gun went off. The bullet bounced off of something in the distance, jumping to lodge itself in her arm. Eloise ignored the pain, grabbing the nearest item; a small wooden end table, and slamming it down on the back of his neck. Blood started to pool from his mouth instantly. He barely had a chance to win.

  “And to think I was starting to have feelings for you.” Eloise clapped her hands together, gathering things from the kitchen to scrape her presence away, like gum from the sidewalk. She packed grabbed money from his wallet and pocket, digging for his keys and driving to her apartment to pack up. She would take several days to cover a trail and start new ones going in the wrong directions. It was her job; moving from place to place.

  Heidi pulled out a pad of paper from her bra, scratching the names “Anne Wentz” and “Malikov Ivanovish” off. She didn’t know Malikov would be here, but she knew she was close. She read the words Side Order many times, repeating the last handful of names on the list. They were off the books but part of her duty. She left her apartment by sundown, driving into the vast unknown of a risky career.

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  NOT DEAD

  I used to think of that as a good thing. I remember, whenever I was having a bad day, or if I was just in a bad mood, I used to close my eyes and remind myself that it could be worse. I used to remind myself that I wasn’t dead.

  Back then I believed that death was the worst thing that could happen to a person. I actually believed that.

  Now I say the same words, every morning when I wake up. I am not dead. And I weep.


  Or maybe I don’t. I guess it depends on how you define the word. If weeping is an action of the soul, a deep and bitter howling of the mind, if weeping is an emotional pit, then I weep. If weeping is the actual physical process of crying and wailing, then I don’t.

  I can’t

  “Good Morning, Mr. Niraj.”

  It’s the nurse with the freckles, Amelia. She’s my favorite, she talks to me while she works. The only other person who talks to me anymore is an old preacher who comes by about once a month and reads a chapter out of the Bible before moving on to the next room.

  Amelia opens the curtains letting the morning sun in, then gets to work. She checks me over for any changes, switches out bags here and there, all the while telling me about her date with her boyfriend the night before.

  I try to focus on her words, immerse myself in the moment. I know what comes next, and the only peace I can give myself is in blocking that knowledge from my mind, pushing it away.

  Or at least try to.

  Eventually she picks up my chart and looks at it, shaking her head.

  “Still with the samples. I swear, Mr. Niraj, as long as we’ve been doing this, the doctor probably has more of you bagged up in his lab than in this room.”